


Shake From Your Spell

by coloursflyaway



Category: Captain America (Movies), Captain America - All Media Types, Marvel (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Angst, Bucky slowly finding back to himself, Canon-Typical Violence, Happy Ending, M/M, Murder, Past Brainwashing, Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Recovered Memories, Self-Mutilation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-27
Updated: 2014-08-27
Packaged: 2018-02-15 01:33:23
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 17,771
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2210679
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/coloursflyaway/pseuds/coloursflyaway
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Winter Soldier pulls Steve from the river and leaves him on the shore, only remembering two things: That he has to kill Captain America, and that he couldn't bring himself to do that.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Shake From Your Spell

(1)

He doesn’t go far, just far enough he cannot be seen anymore. There are bushes around, trees and dirt, and he looks at them for longer than he has ever looked at anything, counts blades of grass and leaves until he hears footsteps close by; a girl who wanders around as if lost, and who takes a picture of the man in the blue suit before she calls the police. And he leaves before the police can arrive and before the girl finds him, and most importantly, before his target can wake up, because he has kept him alive once, but isn’t sure if he’d be able to do it again.

 

(2)

He’s still clad in leather, which fits him like a second skin, and he can’t quite remember ever wearing anything else, but no one else is. So he takes out the first man his age he finds, breaks first his wrist, then his neck and pulls off his armour, piece by piece and cannot think of anything but that he must have done this before, because he knows where to find the buckles holding him together.

 

(3)

The city he’s in is big, impossibly big, and he thinks he might be lost, but then again, he doesn’t know what lost is. So he just wanders streets which all look the same, doesn’t look at people but keeps his head down, and once again, is surprised when they do the same. He’s not used to this, to walk and not run, to hide and not hunt, and it would be frightening if he still felt fear.  
But instead, there is just a vague sense of emptiness, which has settled so comfortably somewhere between his chest and stomach, has crept into his veins and tainted every of his thoughts, his words; it’s the place where they must have left their commands before – he doesn’t know, he guesses, because everything before the last time he woke up is gone, just fragments and tattered, torn glimpses which remain. Before he fell, before the water, he had a goal, a purpose: Killing the very man he watched breathe only minutes or hours of days before (he has lost every sense of time, sometimes a single breath takes an eternity, and sometimes he finds himself at another corner he had never seen before, not knowing how he got there), and the only thing he can remember, _really remember_ , is that he needed, needs, will need to kill him, that he is worthless and replaceable and a waste of space and breath and time otherwise. He remembers that.  
And he remembers the look in the captain’s eyes when he stopped fighting.

 

(4)

He ends up at the river again, by his own volition or a twist of fate, he doesn’t know. Doesn’t care either, because it is as good a place as all of the others, at least now that the captain is gone. Which he is, he checks before he allows himself to come closer, then checks for blood, for the sign of another fight - he is replaceable after all, who knows who else they sent after the other - but does not find any. It’s good, but makes him feel strange, as if he was lighter, as if the colours were a little bit brighter.

There is no reason to keep walking, just like there wasn’t one in the first place, and so he doesn’t go on, sits down where he was standing before and watches the ground while the stars above him show themselves and make him feel a little lighter still.

 

(5)

He cannot move his living arm, the bone broken and shattered, so he cradles it to his chest, keeps it still. It hurts, but that doesn’t matter.

 

(6)

It’s the next morning when he there is a slight change in the air, grass whispering and bushes groaning as someone pushes their branches aside; he is on his feet and behind the next tree before he can even think. It’s the captain, who is beaten up, lip split and one eye swollen shut, who looks out at the water, looks down on the riverbed where he left him before, as if he was searching for something important. The other sighs, and there is some kind of feeling the sound conveys.  
He looks at the captain’s bruises, knows it was him who left them there, and feels nothing at all.

 

(7)

He watches the man a little longer, then he leaves without turning back once.

 

(8)

It takes what he thinks might be another day until he finds himself changing. Subtly at first (the images blur a little at the edges, become a bit hazy, his tongue feels too large for his mouth), but getting worse quickly, until the space in his chest, which his masters carved out to fill with commands, which used to be empty, has filled with a gnawing need, making his stomach growl. He whips around every time, ready to attack, but only ever finds confused faces behind him, if he finds anything at all.  
It’s maddening, and even more so because he does not understand, because he needs something which he can’t remember, needs to be treated like a human being when he is so far from being one.

 

(9)

It's the smell of something which changes everything; he can remember the name (a hotdog, someone used to call it, but it's confusing, because while it is, there is no animal around. Maybe, he figures, it's food for dogs, which would fit, would explain why he knows it. That's all he is after all), but not the taste, not the smell, only knows that he wants it. A strange feeling, want, and one he cannot quite remember and yet recognises for what it is.

It's the only thing he feels when he drags the young man behind the next building and kills him with three, practiced punches which come as easily as breathing does. He stares at the hotdog for a few moments after the man has fallen down, then falls down and mirrors the other's pose, takes it in his hand and holds it close to his face. Biology does the rest, makes him sink his teeth inside and chew, swallow.

The loss of control is frightening, but something else makes up for it: The faint memory of having done this before.

 

(10)

He feels better afterwards, the gnawing feeling in his stomach stopped and filled, leaving him once more blissfully empty. At least for a little while, hardly more than a few seconds, because his tongue feels swollen, his lips strangely rough, like sandpaper, and while he just stands there and listens to the sounds of a city he doesn't understand, he notices that another thing is missing.

It's an almost wonderful thing, because it's a mission, it's something which needs doing, he realises suddenly, and that is all he needs. So he gets up and straightens again, looks at the dead body on the ground and wonders if a human being would take something of his to help them along. They might, but he doesn't know what, so he just leaves like he is, frayed along the edges and searching something whose name he doesn't know.

 

(11)

His arm hurts more with each step, and he ignores it, but holds it tighter, hoping that it will heal. It always did before.

 

(12)

He walks the streets, but nothing feels familiar, looks like it is something he has done before, felt before; his steps are not slowing down, but he can feel how it is getting harder to lift his feet, as if someone had fastened a weight on them (which they did before, kept him in a room, all limbs tied to a different weight so that he could move, but only impossibly, horribly slowly. They made him fight, but he wasn't good enough, no matter how hard he tried.)  
Once, he checks, then another time, but his feet look like they always do, black leather and unbound.

 

(13)

He ends up by the river again, because he does not know where else to go. No one else is around, and he sinks down on the ground, kneels as if awaiting orders.

 

(14)

It starts slowly, one drop which lands on the back of his hand, round and clear, and although he shouldn't, he knows what it means. _Rain_ , his brain provides a word, just like it sometimes does, and he keeps his eyes on the small drop until another joins him, then another. A second and then there are a myriad of them, raining down on him, and he leans back, wants to see.  
One or two drops wet his lips and he darts his tongue out, licks them away, and it’s a jolt which shoots through him; something he has found without looking.

He licks away the drops on his hand, too and they taste differently, holds them out to capture more. They form puddles in his palms, and he watches them grow for a few moments before bringing his hands up to his lips, letting the water that has gathered there run into his mouth and soothe the dryness there.

After thirteen hands he has let the rain fill up with water, he stops counting, but does it another few dozen times, before he is finally satisfied. Then he leans back and opens his mouth wide, lets the rain find his tongue instead.

 

(15)

It gets harder and harder to force his eyes to stay open after that, his thoughts becoming slower and slower, and it is terrifying. There are no open wounds which could be the cause for his weakness, no poison he could have ingested; there is no reason, but he still cannot stop it.

In the end, he falls asleep without noticing it, and only wakes when the rain has stopped and dried, feeling better and yet worse than ever before.

 

(16)

He finds a rhythm, slowly, but surely. Three times a day he has to eat, so he won’t start feeling weaker, the more, the better. Drink, whenever he can, sleep in regular intervals which he cannot quite understand. With those habits in place, the words come back too, words for things he never knew he had forgotten and those which he has missed, words which seem important, and those he thinks he will never need to use.  
But they come, and he is glad for it, because every blank spot in his mind, which he can fill with information feels like a small step in the right direction.

 

(16)

He finds the museum by chance, because there is a boy with a shield that looks familiar, too-large helmet balanced on his head. _Steve_ , he thinks and cannot say why. It's a name, he knows that much, it's a name and he doesn't know anything else.  
(It's not true; he knows it's important, more important than anything else.)

The boy is excited, tugs on his mother’s hand and he follows them, follows and follows until he is standing in a room and the captain’s face is all around him.  
He’s bright and he’s beautiful, just like on that bridge, looks determined and he knows that they must love him, all those people around watching and walking; the thought brings back a feeling which feels too large for his chest, and yet strangely poisoned. Like he wants to push them against the wall and wants to ask them why now, why not sooner, _why now_?

 

(17)

He cannot bear it for long, just a few minutes, before he turns and walks away (he does not run anymore, just walks, just walks). The stare of the captain is like a constant pressure at the back of his head, part of him screaming that he has to kill the target, so that he will be able to come back and find a purpose again, another part aches and wishes for a thousand things at once.  
It’s impossible to unwind all the threads, all the small hopes and bittersweet desires, so he does not try, only tries to will them all away, to return to his blissful silence.

And yet, the captain’s eyes do not leave him when he leaves the building behind, stay hidden within him; he only notices that he is clutching his broken arm so tightly he can feel the crushed bones grind together when he hears his own hiss of pain.

 

(18)

His feet want to bring him down to the river, but he doesn’t let them.

 

(19)

There is blood shining red on his metal arm, liquid seeping into the cracks and joints, and he does not wash, does not wipe it away. Killing still feels natural, feels easy and brings with it a short while of silence, of peace; when he looks down at the older woman at his feet, he feels nothing at all.  
But he has learnt in those last days, weeks, lifetimes, and does what a human being would, searches her purse and pockets, takes the money he knows he needs and everything else which looks useful, a few small tokens made of metal, a scarf, her coat.  
It’s too small around the shoulders and too short, but the blue fabric is warm, and the one feeling he can distinguish so easily and has always been able to distinguish, is cold.

Cold which freezes him from inside out, makes his limbs ache and his throat close up, his eyes water and his chest constrict, cold which sometimes makes it unable to breathe, to think.

 

(20)

He ends up surrounded by the captain’s eyes again although he did not want to. It’s the same museum, and every nerve of his body is screaming in anguish, yet he cannot find the strength to turn around and leave again; there is something which draws him there, which makes him set one foot in front of the other.  
The captain is shining so brightly that he thinks he’ll go blind, but knows it would be worth it. His arm, the living one, does not hurt much anymore, although he is not able to move it as well as before, and he reaches out for one of the pictures without thinking.

He never does touch it though, pulls his hand back when it’s only an inch away, and suddenly he’s disgusted, feels and knows how to name the feeling, because the captain is so radiant and even a touch of his hand would soil his image. Still, he lingers, looks at the lines of the man’s jaw, the blue of his eyes and the gentleness in his gaze – he remembers it so well from that day.

 _You’re my friend_ , the man had said, but he does not believe it.

 

(21)

It only catches his eye when he is about to leave again, the pressure having returned to his head, a small picture of the man’s face on another’s body, sickly and frail. _Steve_ , he thinks, and there is an ache in his chest which feels familiar.

 

(22)

Finally, he lets his feet take him back to the river; it’s raining and the drops feel like penance on his skin, soaking the clothes he has torn from dead bodies. He sinks down on the spot where he left the captain bleeding and still not dying, splays his hand on the grass and mud.  
He has killed a man and his son on the way, but the peace they gave him is wearing off already, giving way to the static chatter that is his thoughts; he wonders if he can rip the voices out of his head like he has ripped tongues out of people’s mouth.

There is no time to try it out, although his metal fingers itch to claw at someone’s flesh again, because there is movement behind him, he can feel it in his bones and scars and shattered mind. He’s up within a moment, hidden behind a tree and still out of breath, there is a print of his hand in the mud and no time to wipe it away.  
Every single of his instincts is telling him to run away, but he stays, unable to move even a muscle, stays and watches the captain – Steve, his mind tells him, but he is not sure if he wants to acknowledge it, because he feels to dirty to even let his lips touch the other’s name – walk down to the riverbed, shirt clinging to his chest and hair stuck to his forehead. He does not turn around, just looks out over the disturbed water flowing past them as if he is waiting, searching for something.

Suddenly his muscles move again, but in the wrong direction; it costs all of his strength to still them again, keep them fixed and him hidden. His body wants to get closer to the captain, and he cannot let it.

 

(23)

It takes forever until the other turns around again, their eyes not meeting, never meeting, and for a few seconds, he thinks that the worst is over and dealt with, that he will be able to just run and never come back, look back, but then the captain casts his eyes on the ground, sees the smudged, but still visible outline of a hand which is actually a weapon.  
He sees something in the other’s form change, his muscles tensing, but not as if awaiting a fight.

“Bucky?”, the captain asks in a voice that is just loud enough to be heard over the rain. “Bucky, I’m still waiting. I won’t ever stop waiting for you.”

 

(24)

He runs until he can feel his heart hammering a way out of his chest, until every breath slices through him with as much precision as a scalpel, runs until his legs give out under him and send him crashing to the ground.

 

(25)

It's night time and he wakes shivering, terrified because he is cold and cannot see, it’s cold and his limbs won’t move, it’s cold…

 

(26)

He must have passed out again, because he wakes up again when it’s morning, the birds chirping and the river still flowing past him. There is grass under his living palm, soft and wet, pressed against his cheek and neck.  
Shivers are still wrecking through him, but he blames that on the soaked coat weighing him down, all the layers underneath that which are clinging to him like the shirt clung to the captain the night before. He remembers him and wonders if he’ll ever be able to forget him, both hopes and fears it.

The man had called him a name, a name which belonged to him like a human being, not a weapon, not a tool, not a dog, and with trembling fingers he reaches into his pockets, digs out one of the things he took from that woman’s purse. It’s a small mirror, he knows it although he has never looked into it; sometimes when he passes a shop, he catches a glimpse of his shadow in the windows, and each time feels worse.  
Yet, he still sits up now, closes his eyes and holds the mirror out in front of him. One, two, three deep breaths, then he pries them open again, every millimetre a fight he has to win.

It takes a moment for his brain to catch up, because there are dead, blue eyes staring back at him, chapped lips and paper-thin skin stretched so tautly over sharp cheekbones it looks like it’s going to be sliced apart any second. Death itself could not look worse, and it’s almost impossible not to fling the mirror away, to just forget about himself again and try to forget about the captain as well.  
But he keeps his fingers tightly around it instead, grips the mirror so hard that he can feel his knuckles hurting, the glass cracking.

Part of him still wants to return to his silence, his peace, but there is so much more of tattered, ruined him which wants something completely different. Because the captain, _Steve_ , has called him his name, and he needs to become whatever it is the other wants him to be.

 

(27)

Going back to the museum hurts every atom in his body, but still he sets one foot in front of the other in front of the other until he has arrived, is surrounded by the captain’s eyes. For a few moments, he cannot move, doesn’t dare to and doesn’t want to either, before he gathers up the strings attached to his limbs again, makes them move and carry him over to the one corner of the room he has never dared to look at for more than a part of a second.

There are grainy black and white videos, but he cannot bear to look at them; his eyes linger on the screen for a moment too long and he sees smiles and flashing eyes and it hurts more than his broken arm ever did. So instead, he looks at the pictures and finds that he can read.

The eyes he saw in the small pocket mirror look back at him, just less broken, less tired, the name underneath the picture is the same one that the captain, that Steve, called him, and every of his breaths feels like ice spreading out in his veins.

 

(28)

He kills a man, brown hair and blue eyes, to stop himself from shaking. It does not help.

 

(29)

Once more, his feet carry him down to the river, as if that’s the only way they can still remember and he lets them because he has no other choice; his head is too full of thoughts to control them. As long as he knows, he has always had a mission, something to give him a purpose and keep him grounded, but this is the first time he can choose one of his own liking, and he does.  
Might have done so far, far earlier, without realising it.

Steve – because he needs to start calling the other that, if he wants to succeed – Steve is waiting for him, has said so himself, and he wants to come back to soothe his mind. Only that Steve is waiting for a human being, an old friend, Sergeant James Buchanan Barnes, not for what he is now; he can’t let Steve see him like this, this empty shell of a man he used to know, but he can try to get better. Try to remember how it was to walk upright and smile and remember a time before the ice.

 

(30)

The river looks the same as before, but feels different, as if a hint of the captain was still lingering in the air, changing it. He rummages through his pockets once more and draws out the mirror, which is cracked and dirty but still dangerous, and raises it so he can see his face.  
It hasn’t changed, but he still tries to smile.

 

(31)

He returns to the museum the next day and finds that although he has a mission now, a goal, walking inside and letting himself be surrounded by pictures of the captain hasn’t gotten easier. Every step he takes is still a challenge, his entire conditioning trying to somehow keep him away; in the back of his mind, he thinks that it might be a good sign.

There aren’t many people around, just a father with his son, two elderly couples, and he could kill them all within twenty-seven seconds, so he doesn’t pay them much attention, just walks to that one corner, to the board with his face on it. Going there is even harder than just walking into the room, as if there was someone tugging him back on strings he cannot see, something like fear jolting through him and making it hard to breathe.

Still, he keeps walking, keeps walking for what feels like a lifetime until he can make out his face on the glass; the man depicted looks determined and strong, while he feels as if he’s broken and only held together by the thin layer of his skin. Again, he reads what the world has to say about James Buchanan Barnes, although he knows the words already, knows where he was born and where he supposedly died, then reads it again, and again, just because he cannot bring himself to look at the video, not yet.

He reads the text four more times, until he can taste the words on his tongue and in his veins, before he dares to raise his eyes to the small screen. The video is grainy and only black and white; every second of it hurts more than losing his arm all over again.

 

(32)

By the time he turns away, his eyes are burning and his chest feels full with something heavy and viscous, which sticks to every thought and word and breath he wants to take. Counting how often he has watched the video is impossible by now, often enough that whenever he closes his eyes, he can see the two figures, Steve and the man he used to be, laughing.  
Even that hurts, but it’s necessary pain, good pain in some sense, because the captain wants him to be like the James Barnes in the video, so he has to learn. Find out how to move his body in the right ways, curl his lips into that smile, duck his head like that.

 

(33)

He comes back to the museum for the next three days, staying as long as he dares to, can bear to, and watches the video over and over again, trying to memorise every twitch, every subtle movement, every blink.

 

(34)

He spends hours in front of the tiny mirror, wrapped up in his too small coat, and tries to smile at himself, tries to correct the curve of his lips until they fit the one he has seen in the video, tries to get his eyes to light up and go gentle, but it never quite works, never quite looks like it should.

 

(35)

There is not much of Bucky Barnes left in this world, not much more than a few short videos and pictures, a couple of honorary mentions in text books, and it’s not enough. He needs more, needs words and thoughts and the way people look when they open their eyes for the first time in the morning.  
The only person he knows is Steve, but he cannot go to him, ask about that friend he lost seventy years ago and thinks he has gotten back now, can’t take the captain’s gestures and make them his own; the other is special, and even Bucky Barnes cannot ever have been that.

And there lies the solution: Bucky Barnes cannot have been special, so anyone will do.

 

(36)

The best thing about this time, this city is that no one ever looks at him, no one asks questions. It feels almost familiar, being no one, and it calms him down a little, helps him think almost as much as the river does. And it helps now, because he can just sit down on a bench (until he remembers that that is no where he is allowed to sit, until he moves to the floor, only to remember that he has to act human, has to act like a man and not a dog) and watch.  
There are so many people around that it’s hard to choose sometimes, but usually, he just doesn’t care, watches young girls with strangely coloured hair as much as old men clutching their canes with weak fingers. They laugh and he goes back to the river, which has become as much of a home as he can have to him, and tries to laugh the same way, they sigh and an hour later, he is sighing too, feeling something like tiredness buried deep in his marrow.

 

(37)

Time passes, maybe a week, maybe four, and he starts to pick favourites. There is a young man who works at a café and has a laugh he can imitate easily, an older woman who picks up her young daughter up every day and who holds her head high and walks with a sway in her hips his body seems to recognise, as if the movement is locked, hidden somewhere in his cells, and he has only to dig it out again.  
He follows them more and more often, them and the old man who feeds pigeons near the river every day; a boy with brightly coloured hair and a tattered leather jacket, who sleeps on the streets and has a smile which reminds him of the captain; a girl with dark skin and darker hair, who waits at a bus stop every day with a friend, talking loud enough he can hear them without standing too close.  
He takes her words (she says _what’s up, mate?_ and he repeats the words for the rest of the say, trying to get the tone, the pitch right; she says _I swear to God, I am going to kill him so hard he won’t know what hit him_ , and he does the same), the homeless boy’s smile and old man’s quietness and hopes it helps; he doesn’t feel more human, but maybe he looks it.

 

(38)

It’s just a fleeting thought at first, a glimpse of a motivation, and yet it sticks. It’s his arm, that metal monster they fused to his flesh, which shines silver but looks red as blood to him; Bucky Barnes didn’t have it, and he shouldn’t, either.

 

(39)

There is a woman he sometimes sees, with a bright smile and a loud voice; he follows her home. Her door is painted a dark red and it fits, because he rings the bell and waits until it opens, then colours the floor the same colour.  
She might be dead, might just have a concussion, her nose and split lip spilling blood, but he doesn’t care, it doesn’t matter. He closes the door and drags her into one of the rooms, leaves her on the floor to live or die.

The flat is small, but he doesn’t need much space, just a kitchen knife, a towel he fashions into a gag to stop the screams.

 

(39)

His skin breaks easily, especially where flesh meets metal, where his nerves are far too sensitive anyway. Every swipe of the knife sends a new gush of blood down his chest, warm and sticky, and he ignores it, presses deeper and deeper, feels tissue give way and muscles being sliced apart.  
Of course, there is pain, fierce, hot pain which seems to radiate from the cuts to every other part of his body, but he ignores it; he has been in so much pain that it hardly seems to matter.

But then his knife stills, something hard and unyielding stopping it, and he presses hard, thinking it to be bone, which he knows, gives in if you apply enough force. But this time, it doesn’t; the tip of his knife breaks and it’s only then that he understands: his metal arm isn’t just that, it’s fused to his skeleton, laced to his bones.

He continues cutting, because even so the metal has to stop and give way to flesh and bone and sinews he can tear apart and rip off, draws the knife from his shoulder to his sternum, the broken knife scratching the surface of the metal plate they have pushed underneath his skin and flesh.  
Faintly, he is aware that he is screaming behind the makeshift gag in his mouth.

The metal doesn’t stop; when the knife finally does dip down, it’s because he has reached the other side of his chest. It’s no use, no fissures or seams he can dig in to break Hydra’s weapon free from his body. So he starts again, goes down from his collarbone down and traces sickeningly silver metal, staining it with blood.  
The pain is blinding now, his whole chest on fire and wrapped up in ice at the same time, but he’s got to become better for Steve, can’t meet those blue eyes if he isn’t human.

He cuts and cuts, finds no ribs, but more metal, drops the knife to claw at his flesh with his bare fingers, pushing at the wounds and into the cuts, unnoticed tears making it hard to see, the pain making it hard to breathe.  
There is so much blood that he keeps slipping, but beneath his skin, he can feel metal. There are no thoughts anymore, nothing but wild, feral instincts left; he needs to get the last piece of Hydra out of himself, needs to leave it behind to go on.

His fingers are wet with blood and he isn’t even screaming anymore, the sounds stuck in his throat without any chance of getting out, there are sparks dancing in front of his eyes, and he knows he has lost so much, too much blood, but he doesn’t stop. Digs his fingernails into tissue and abused flesh and tears at it, feels it give way.

He stops to feel; finds his ribs and follows them with shaking fingers and weeping eyes until they disappear beneath metal.

 

(40)

He passes out between crying and cutting and trying to peel the flesh off his bones, only wakes when the sun has set and the darkness keeps his eyes from seeing all the blood covering his skin. It’s still trickling out from various cuts and gashes, he can feel it warm and slick on his bare chest.  
Sitting up almost makes him pass out once more, his shoulder, his whole being is aching, a sharp, terrible pain which cuts through him and leaves his mind reeling.

Without warning, bile is rising in his throat; he throws up whatever there still was in his stomach, shaking and coughing before he falls back, unable to do more than lie there and wait for the darkness to claim him once more.

 

(41)

He drifts in and out of consciousness for the next day or two; impossibly glad that no one finds him whenever he has the strength to think at all. And then, he wakes up and can think, can sit up without breaking down again immediately.  
The room around him looks unfamiliar, and he cannot remember how far he has come.

Hissing, he reaches up and finds as much dried blood as fresh one, and half-healed cuts scattered on his chest, his sides. His arm is still there, still moving, and it takes a few moments until he realises what this has to mean.  
He’s healing fast, too fast for him to finish what he has started; Hydra’s mark is still on him and he doesn’t know how to get rid of it.

He’s not thinking clearly, if at all, when he starts scrambling up, his hands blindly groping for the knife he has dropped. The blade slices into his palm when he finally finds it, but for once the pain is welcome, even if only because it means he hasn’t lost his only weapon. It’s still covered in crusted blood, but he doesn’t care, just wipes it once over the torn and tattered coat lying close by, then raises it to his shoulder.  
His arm is connected to his sternum, laced to his ribs, and he can break neither, but he hasn’t tried his shoulder, doesn’t know if they fused their weapon to his spine, threaded the cables into his marrow.

It’s not a clean cut, nor a swift one, because his hand is shaking, and this time, without the gag and every single nerve in agony already, he cannot keep back the screams, but it’s a cut, new blood mixing with the old one. There is resistance, and for a moment, he is about to give up, but then the knife sinks in deeper, slices through his flesh, and he is screaming, but it’s a chance, it’s a mistake Hydra made and he can use.

Again, he cuts, cuts and cuts until the pain is unbearable and he knows what it is he has found. A small gap between his collarbone and his shoulder blade, just wide enough for him to fit one, maybe two fingers inside, a thick cable emerging from the arm to disappear again in his neck, his spine. It’s too close to his carotid, far too close, and he knows that one wrong movement could kill him, but he doesn’t care; at least he’d die human and not as the dog Hydra has turned him into.

 

(42)

He cuts through the wires, the blade slicing through his fingertips, and the pain is unlike anything he has ever felt before, electric and white-hot, searing and so intense that he doesn’t just forget himself, but even his mission.

 

(43)

It takes almost an hour until he can think again; his arm hangs limp at his side, unmoving, and it feels like victory, even if his whole body is still cramping and shaking with the aftershocks of the initial pain.  
But he can move again, enough to make it possible to dig his fingers into the small gap between him and the monster Hydra has made him into and pulls.

He does not even expect it, not that easily, but switched off and dead, the metal gives in, wire and screws trying to resist but failing. It’s not the whole arm, but he keeps tearing at the tattered parts and pieces until he’s surrounded by glimmering, glistening, bloody metal, trembling and feeling impossibly lighter.

 

(44)

He falls in and out of consciousness for a few days, sometimes too weak to even open his eyes, sometimes strong enough to get up and take a few steps, take a few sips of water from the sink. It’s the serum which is patching him up, the one thing which keeps him from ever becoming what he used to be saving his life.  
And although the pain drives him wild, forces him to find his gag and keep it between his lips all the time, to keep the screams from reaching the air, he feels better. Not good, but then again, he doesn’t think he will ever feel good again, but better, lighter, more human.  
A bit more as if he could see the captain again.

 

(45)

He leaves the flat two days later, faintly aware that even if the woman had still been alive before, she wouldn’t be now. It doesn’t matter.

 

(46)

The days grow shorter and it gets colder and colder until the stolen coat isn’t quite enough to keep him from freezing. So he kills a man for his jacket, another for his boots, just like he kills for money, kills for food.  
There is blood on his hand and when he looks down on it, he thinks that maybe, maybe he is feeling something.

 

(47)

He’s asleep when the snow comes for the first time, hidden behind bushes and trees and close to the river he always comes back to; when he wakes, he finds everything around him white and for one horrible, horrifying second, he thinks that the past months were all a dream.

 

(48)

The city is asleep, or as close to it as he has ever seen it when he reaches it, leaving the trees and bushes behind, and he isn’t sure if he loves or hates the fact. Maybe a bit of both. Snow is dusted everywhere, looking like cobwebs, like bones ground to powder and he cannot keep his eyes off it, because his feet leave imprints in the soft snow, proof that he is alive.

 

(49)

A week later (because he is counting now, hours and days and weeks), the old man who used to feed the birds stops coming by the river. He’s confused at first, until he remembers that death can come without him helping it along, too.

 

(50)

The cold gets harder and harder to bear, because no matter how many layers he wears, how many scarves and gloves, the freezing air always finds a way to reach his skin, and makes him shiver, fear, kill. Because it brings back memories, pieces and tattered bits of words and feelings and ice, and he cannot be anything but the weapon they made him to if they are in his head.

Faintly, he remembers the captain – Steve, he repeats in his head, _Steve_ – saying he’s waiting for him, and maybe, it’s time to let him know he was listening.

 

(51)

The next day, he finds a man about his height and drags him into the next alley, smashes his head against the wall before he can even make a sound, which is harder now, with only one arm. His instincts are telling him to finish it – a punch in the throat, breaking his neck with two quick movements, use the kitchen knife he still carries around with him to slice open his throat – but he doesn’t, thinks about the captain and stops.  
He still doesn’t feel pity, doesn’t feel remorse, but he knows that he should, and for now, that is enough.

So instead, he strips the man, leaves his old clothes behind and uses the small mirror he is still carrying to look at his own, dead eyes as he cuts his hair off, leaving it short and jagged and maybe, hopefully looking a little more like how James Barnes wore it.

He walks back into the crowd wearing another person’s skin.

 

(52)

He goes back to the museum one last time; looking at the videos still hurts as much as it did before, but he watches them over and over again.

 

(53)

Finding the captain is far easier than he imagined, far _too_ easy, because if he can find him, then so can everyone else. He just follows him from a fight back home, stays quiet and far behind Steve, and although he hasn’t been created for stealth, for secrecy, it works. The other doesn’t notice, and he just waits outside, because he cannot bear the thought of speaking to the captain yet. To Steve.

The building looks strangely familiar, as if he has seen it once before in passing, as if he has seen it in a dream, but he can’t place the memory, can’t quite access it. There are a lot of them in his brain, shadows of thoughts, of feelings, but whenever he digs too deep, the ice comes, and he is thrown back here, without having found anything at all.  
Now, he doesn’t dare to follow the trail this half-memory left, because he needs to watch, needs to see everything.

Nothing happens for hours, and he is almost thankful for it; there is no plan he can stick to, just Steve’s words and his hope that they still count.

 

(54)

But then Steve leaves. Then Steve leaves and he cannot move for a few second, can only watch the other walk and try not to catch the other’s eye.  
There is some strange feeling which has settled in his stomach, making his chest feel too tight and his heart too big for it, he cannot place it, only knows that he needs it to stop, to leave him alone. It doesn’t, though, only gets stronger when he finally has lost sight of the captain, when he has regained control of his limbs.

No one looks at him when he crosses the street, walks into the house Captain America just left. No one ever looks in this city.

He expects having to break into every flat in the house to find the right one, expects more dead bodies than he can count, but his feet carry him up a flight of stairs, then another, just like they always carry him back to the river, as if they knew where he was going.  
And they do.  
How he knows it when he has reached the right door, he cannot say, but he stops in front of it, prepared to knock it down. But it feels wrong, destroying something which belongs to the captain, and he can still hear his words - _Bucky, I’m still waiting. I won’t ever stop waiting for you_ – in the back of his head, so he steps forward and doesn’t run, uses his one hand to try the doorknob.

It turns easily, and the door swings open without a sound. Something inside his chest is burning and he doesn’t know how to put it out.

 

(55)

The flat is tidy and clean, not as big as it maybe should be, considering who the captain is, but somehow, it doesn’t surprise him. He walks through the rooms once, seeing the open windows, although it’s winter, the blankets left out on the sofa, the wrapped food which is neatly stacked in a corner of the kitchen; it looks like Steve is waiting, just like he said he was, and the fire in his chest burns brighter.  
It’s not enough to keep the ice away, but it warms him up a little from the inside, makes him melt.

 

 

(56)

The captain comes home an hour later, and he can hear the door click as much as he can feel the air change when he steps inside. He’s been waiting on the couch, although sitting on it still makes him feel uncomfortable, rehearsing the words he needs to say in his head over and over again.  
_Hey Steve, long time no see, how’ve you been?_  
It's what the young man in the café had sometimes greeted people with, and all of them had always smiled back, talked.

But then the door clicks shut, and the air changes around him, and everything changes. He is sitting on a couch, and he cannot do that, is not allowed to; there are flashes of pain and ice flitting through his mind and before he knows it, he’s on the floor, where he belongs, on his knees, head bowed and arms hanging by his sides. It’s how he’s supposed to wait, he doesn’t know much, but he knows that.

There are no words in his mind, not even the ones he repeated over and over in his head, but that’s good; he’s not supposed to speak without being spoken to first after all. Footsteps approach, stop, and then come closer once again, slower and almost hesitant, he keeps his head down and listens, fears the moment the door will open as much as he wants it to finally come.  
The captain had said he was waiting, but sometimes, his masters lie. A memory flutters across his mind, a guard promising there wouldn’t be more pain, only to pick up a cane and beat the soles of his feet until he was screaming.

The footsteps stop, and after an eternity, the door swings open, and he holds his breath, doesn’t dare to exhale. He’s at the captain’s mercy, he knows that, wouldn’t defend himself, and even if he tried, it would be no use – his body is still recovering, his metal arm a mess of torn wires and splinters fixed in place, while the other is strong and graceful and human.

The captain makes a sound he can’t place, it sounds pained, sounds shocked, sounds sweet and gentle at the same time, and he doesn’t look up, cannot meet the other’s eyes, isn’t worthy to do so. He can’t speak either, and the other does not say a word, so the silence stretches between them, tense and thick, making him curl the fingers he still has left into a fist.  
This was a mistake, he shouldn’t have come, he’s not good enough yet, still Hydra’s lapdog and not the captain’s friend, he’s-

“Hello, Bucky”, the captain says, and he stops thinking altogether. He’s heard the other’s voice a thousand times in his head, but it’s different now, because the captain is so close and he can’t speak, although he can feel the words resonate in his chest, echo in his mind. His fingers clench harder, the nails digging deep into his palm, but he can hardly feel the pain, can hardly feel anything but the captain’s presence.  
It’s overwhelming, makes the fire inside him burn hot and hotter, his chest tightening until it feels to small to hold his heart; he’s anxious and doesn’t even know the feeling.

The other moves closer, just one step, then stopping as if he isn’t sure what to do, where to go, and he doesn’t understand. Doesn’t know what to do either, so he just stares at the floor, waiting for an order, for an instruction, for anything at all.  
“God, I…”, the captain starts, his voice sounding wet somehow, choked, “I can’t, not like this. Please, Buck, just- can you get up, can you just _look_ at me?”

And he obeys.

 

(57)

He’s been in a room with those blue eyes on a hundred pictures before, but it’s different now, it’s so different, because the captain’s – Steve’s, he remembers his name now, _Steve’s_ – eyes are bloodshot and pained, tears gathered in the corner, but there is something else too, something which fuels the flames consuming him, strong and intense and so bright it feels like it’s burning him up.  
There is nothing else now, nothing he can pay any attention to, because Steve is looking at him, and he’s nothing while Steve is everything and he can’t, he can’t, he can’t-

He looks down again, although he hasn’t been allowed to, but the punishment he expects never comes.

 

(58)

The captain takes him to the bathroom, says he’ll clean him up, and still he flinches when he sees white tiles and the cold, neon light; he doesn’t try to flee though, because even if Steve lied, even if he wanted to punish, beat, torture him, he’d take it.  
But the captain doesn’t, just watches him with those eyes he still cannot look into, asks him to take off his clothes in the most gentle, most soothing voice, which he wants to trust, but can’t.

There is half a sentence, half a question out of Steve’s mouth when Bucky starts undressing, shrugging off the thick jacket he hasn’t taken off, because he’s always, always cold, but the rest never makes it past his lips, because his blue, blue eyes fall on Bucky’s arm. Or what is still left of it.

Over the past weeks, he has ripped off more and more parts, leaving the surface smoother than before, no wires protruding, no sharp pieces of metal sticking out anymore. It’s not gone, though, although he has ripped off most of the shoulder, the hand and almost the entire forearm, the only thing remaining being the underside of his upper arm and part of the elbow, the metal plates which fuse him with it.

And now, Steve is staring at the mangled pieces, most likely seeing the metal as well as all the pain he has inflicted with it on others, and he wants to hide and yet doesn’t dare to move. The captain doesn’t make a sound, just looks, his eyes wide and filled with horror and something so much worse still, but he doesn’t have time to recognise, because it is Steve who turns around and flees.

 

(59)

The captain comes back, though, just a few moments later, apologises although there is nothing to apologise for, especially not to someone like him. He understands, after all; he isn’t yet human, he isn’t good enough.  
Steve draws him a bath, and then leaves once again, telling him to call if he needed help, but he didn’t quite listen, too focussed on how to make this right.

 

(60)

There are no knifes in the drawers, so he takes what he can find – a small pair of scissors, a nail file, a towel – and takes off his clothes, gets into the tub. It’ll be easier here; back in that woman’s flat, he didn’t care about making a mess, but he cannot treat the captain’s property like a stranger’s.  
The warm water soothes his muscles slightly, but he doesn’t pay it much attention, just sets down his tools and goes to work.

It’s hard to cut through skin with the small blade of the scissors, but he tries his best, pushes one against the scar tissue until it breaks and sinks in, hits the metal plate and he can cut through the flesh, again tracing the outline of the metal he can see, then cutting towards his stomach. He’ll have to slice along the metal plate still hidden inside of him, separate human from monster, and then peel the flesh of his chest back enough to reach the point where his ribs meet metal, so he can saw them through. Do the same to his shoulder and his side, bend back the remaining metal enough to snap the ribs on his back so he can finally cut the metal free and leave it behind.  
It’s dangerous, because he could sever his lungs, because he could puncture his heart, mostly because he will lose more blood than he can even imagine, but that’s a small risk to take if it makes that maybe, it’ll end with Steve being pleased with him.  
And he tries, although it takes forever, although the scars are still so sensitive that every inch feels like a completely new kind of torture, but the blade is too small and although he could try and use the nail file to try and separate his flesh from the metal, it would take long, would do damage to tissue he still needs, would increase the probability of bleeding out.

So he stops after cutting through three or four inches of skin and flesh, pulls the small pair of scissors free and drops it into the warm water. It’s tinted red now, swirls of blood dancing through the liquid when he gets up, blood dripping down his body.  
He needs a bigger knife, a sharper one, maybe something to pin the peeled flesh away while he severs his ribs, maybe some gauze and alcohol to disinfect the wounds afterwards.

Getting up is painful, because his chest is on fire and ice, because he misses the warm water; he does it nonetheless, pulls the towel from between his teeth, gets out of the bathtub and walks out of the room, finding Steve on the sofa he waited on, head bowed, wringing his hands. Looking up and making the most pained, horrified sound at the back of his throat.  
He understands; he isn’t finished yet.

“I- a knife. I need a knife.”

 

(61)

Steve looks at him and he doesn’t know what he can see in his eyes; it’s scalding hot, their gaze trickling down his body and burning him. Something is wrong, he’s done something wrong and he doesn’t quite know what, maybe he has gotten blood all over the captain’s floor, maybe Steve doesn’t want to see him, not before he is finished, maybe…  
Suddenly realises that Steve is crying.

 

(62)

Again, the other takes him to the bathroom, following a trail of red drops and splatters, which Steve doesn’t even seem to see. Tears are spilling from blue eyes, and more than once, he has to force his hand to return to his sides so they can touch.  
He’s filthy, every touch of his fingers could soil Steve, dim his eyes and smile.

Words do not come easily, so he cannot manage to string them together to a sentence, just stops trying after a few tries in his head, just watches as Steve drains the bloody water and washes out the tub before filling it up again. He turns around and there are still tears in his eyes, even if the ones on his cheeks have dried, Steve wipes them away and he is eternally glad for it.  
“Is it- is it okay if I stay?”, the captain asks and it takes him a second to realise he is really being spoken to. The sensation is strange, unfamiliar; he doesn’t want to be asked, he wants Steve to bend him to the other’s will and show him how to please him.  
Still, he nods, because Steve seems to wait for an answer, watches the captain visibly relax in front of him.  
“Okay, you just- get in the bathtub, I’ll be right back, I’ll just get something to disinfect this, stitch you up…” His voice trails off, becomes even more gentle than before, “You’ll be okay, Buck. You’ll be okay.”

Steve leaves, closes the door behind him, and he wonders if the captain thinks he cannot hear the sobs from behind it.

 

(63)

It doesn’t take longer than a few minutes until Steve returns, his eyes even more bloodshot, his cheeks flushed and blotchy, but a bunch of supplies gathered in his hands. He half-expected a knife and a helping hand to tear him free from Hydra’s grasp, but there is just gauze, just rubbing alcohol, needles and thread.  
Steve comes closer, but not quite close, just hovers next to the bathtub, a packet of bandages dangling dangerously from his arms.  
“I didn’t ask, sorry, but is it alright if I touch you?”, the captain asks, looking nervous and scared and desperately hopeful, even to him. He nods, again not because Steve needs permission, but because he seems to think he does, and he is alive to make sure that Steve is content.

And Steve looks content, looks as if he had given him the most precious gift in the world, when the only thing he could give is his mangled, tattered body and whatever mind goes along with it. He doesn’t question, though, because it’s not his place.  
Steve sets aside the tools, then turns back to him, takes the last few steps to the bathtub.

He hasn’t seen the captain up that close before, not since dragging him up the shore, and it’s enough to take the pain in his chest away for a few seconds, to make him forget, because Steve… Steve is looking at him as if he was special, and he can’t take it and yet needs more.

 

(64)

Steve’s hands are on him, and they’re soft and gentle, although he knows just what they can do; when they touch him now, though, it’s to wash away the blood still oozing lazily from the wound on his chest, it’s to stitch the cut together again, to patch him up like a doll the captain still wants to use.  
It hurts – the sting of the needle, the burn of the alcohol, the drag of the thread – but it feels good, better than he thought he was able to feel.  
The fire inside of him has dimmed down to a soft, gentle flame, keeping him warm, and every so often, Steve stops to inspect a wound, old or new, traces his skin with warm fingers that leave a trail of tingles on his sensitive scars.  
Until the captain is finished, pulls back, and he leaves him still tingling, but colder.

“There you go, all fixed now”, Steve says softly and smiles; there seems to be something off about the curl of his lips, but he’s not good with reading people, so it might just be his own mind. “You can get out now. If you want to. Um. Or I could help you with- with the rest. Again, only if you want me to.”  
The captain sounds uncertain, almost anxious, and he just nods.

 

(65)

Steve washes his hair, washes every other part of him too with a soft sponge and softer hands, touching him as if he expected him to break to pieces every second, although the captain has to know that isn’t true. They have fought before, _he_ has fought, and the captain should know, should maybe still bear scars.  
The thought is horrible, but he thinks it anyway, forces himself to finish it, even while Steve trails the sponge down his back and chest, being careful not to touch the cuts scattered there.

Steve’s hands move lower and they are still gentle when they swipe the sponge up his inner thighs, but his body tenses up, muscles tightening without him having an idea why. He did not give the command, didn’t tell them to, and yet they make him scoot back hurriedly, a broken sound making it past his lips.  
At first, he doesn’t even recognise it as his own, but then the captain pulls his hand back hurriedly, looking so terrified, and he still can’t do anything but draw his legs to his chest, trying to stop himself from shaking. He doesn’t succeed, and it’s frightening to lose control so completely, but even more frightening to know that he has moved without an express command.

“Forgive me, sir”, he gasps out before he can think, the words less a conscious decision than an instinct. “Forgive me, sir, I didn’t know my place, it will not happen again.”  
He doesn’t dare to raise his gaze, to look at the captain and see the disappointment, the anger in his eyes. There will be a punishment, there has to be, the captain cannot let such obvious disobedience slide, he just doesn’t know what kind of tool the other uses, so he can’t assume the proper position, doesn’t know if to stand up for a whip or bend over for a paddle, hold onto something for electric shocks-

The captain doesn’t tell him, never does, drops the sponge with a wet splash into the tub and chokes out, “Don’t.” Nothing follows for a few moments, just that one word, one command, and he still doesn’t know what to do, how to behave. “Don’t apologise, not for this, don’t apologise for _anything_.”  
A pause which seems to take forever, and somehow he knows that the captain is crying. That Steve is crying. “If anything I do hurts you, if you don’t like it, _you tell me_. No matter what it is. That’s… that’s an order.”

 

(66)

Steve tells him to lay down in a bed, all soft mattresses and fluffy pillows. He doesn’t sleep a second.

 

(67)

He doesn’t wake, because he didn’t sleep, but in the morning, the captain knocks at the door and he is up within a few moments, falling from the too-soft mattress to the floor, to his knees. It's instinct, nothing more, his body reacting without giving him a chance to think; it’s only when his training lets go that he remembers that he isn’t allowed to do this anymore, that this is not the right way to greet his master.  
He tries to get up, to be good, but there is no time – Steve opens the door and all he can do to show the captain that he hasn’t forgotten is to look up into those blue eyes and find them hurting.

“C’mon, Buck. Breakfast’s ready”, Steve says and he doesn’t know what to think.

 

(68)

There is a plate set down in front of him, laden with eggs and pancakes and things he cannot name, not yet or not anymore, and Steve looks at him over the heaps of food and smiles. It's a nervous smile, if he reads the other’s expression correctly, but an encouraging one too; he still doesn’t know what to do.  
His stomach growls because he isn’t even sure when he has last eaten, but he doesn’t, cannot dare to even look at the plate – it could be a test, could be a trick, because he does not get to eat off plates, in presence of his betters. He gets to pick up scraps from the floor when they are thrown at him.

Steve pushes the plate closer, though, says, “I made the pancakes how you liked them. Like them. Still a bit gooey on the inside.” And then, he can see it, see something like realisation spark in the captain’s eyes, more pain and maybe more understanding.  
His voice goes quiet, goes gentle, and although he cannot see them, he knows that Steve is wringing his hands again. “I made them _for_ you. All of this. It’s yours, I want you to eat. Not everything. Unless you want to, I mean, you can eat as much as you want to, I _want_ you to eat as much as you want to. Can you do that for me?”

It's not quite an order, but close to one, even close enough, he thinks and clumsily picks up the fork the captain has laid out. It feels strange in his hand, heavy and unfamiliar, but he tries to separate a small piece from the pancake, his motions awkward and clumsy. It’d be easier with both his hands, he thinks for a moment, but pushes that thought aside quickly; he’s better off without that wretched machine fused with him.  
But even if he didn’t, the captain wouldn’t give him much time to think anyway, there is a small, wet sound coming from the other side of the table, and when he looks up, the other’s chair is already empty.

Steve is moving until he is standing beside him, leaning down and picking the knife up which is lying next to him, carefully cutting the pancakes to pieces. The captain isn’t speaking, but he can feel the hot drops of tears on his skin.

 

(69)

He gingerly puts one of the pieces into his mouth, still not trusting his body with potentially dangerous tools, and although there are still tear tracks etched into his skin, Steve smiles at him as brightly as the sun and it sparks that fire inside him once again.

 

(70)

It sometimes happens to him if he looks at something, tastes something, and it happens now: He remembers.  
Not much, just an image, the captain’s voice sleepy and slightly rough, his lips sticky with syrup and his heart light.

 

(71)

“Who did this to you?”, Steve asks an hour later when the dishes are cleaned away and he doesn’t know why the other’s voice sounds as if he was in pain, as if he was nervous. Steve is looking down at what is left of his arm and it’s only a moment afterward that he understands.  
“I did”, he answers and pauses, because it’s hard to find words sometimes, at least the right ones. It feels strange, too, talking without being yelled at, without fearing to be punished for giving the wrong answer. “I had to. It was- _theirs_ , and I’m, I’m not theirs anymore. I don’t want to be theirs. I want to be yours.”

He expects a kind word, maybe even praise, because this has to be a good thing, showing the captain that he wants this, but Steve doesn’t give him any of that, just looks at him as if his heart was breaking.  
“Oh Buck”, he whispers, and his voice sounds wet and warm and tortured. “Oh God, Bucky, I’m so sorry.”

 

(72)

Again, Steve leads him into the bathroom, orders him to sit down in a gentle voice, and goes to work. Bandages are removed and changed, the alcohol stings on his skin and burns in every cut, every scratch, but he doesn’t make a sound. Pain, by now, has become the most normal thing in the world, so it’s easy to just ignore it, to take it, because he deserves every electric pulse his neurons fire, every small, little sting and ache and blow.

Part of him is still hoping that the captain will remove the metal still fixed to his body, which is no arm anymore, no limb, just dead weight and the memory of not remembering enough, but the other doesn’t, just cleans the wounds, dresses them again and leaves the faint traces of his touch on his skin when Steve pulls away again.

 

(73)

“I won’t be gone for long, just a few minutes, I promise.” The captain seems to be so nervous, so strangely helpless and he doesn’t know why. But the other is wringing his hands, biting his lips and seems to wait for a moment, so he nods, just to show Steve he has understood. It seems to help, even if just so.  
“A few calls, I just have to make a few calls. Get someone to look at your- your arm, who knows what they are doing, make sure that there is no one out there who might have followed you, just that. A few minutes. I’ll be back as soon as I can.”  
Again, he nods, and again the captain seems to be relieved by the short motion, his lips curling into a hesitant smile, which still seems to be so genuine. “Just don’t move, okay?”, Steve adds, then turns around and leaves.

 

(74)

Steve told him not to move, so he doesn’t, just waits for the captain to return, and for the first time realises that he hasn’t been in a closed room for this long since he’s taken that dead woman’s flat.

 

(75)

The captain comes back and a man follows him, dark hair and slightly too large clothes, eyes which look sad without there being a reason for it he can understand.  
He doesn’t say anything, because he hasn’t been told to, just stands where the captain has left him and lowers his gaze, fighting the urge to fall to his knees when the others come closer. The command Steve has left him with earlier makes it easier, though, gives him something to hold onto.

“Bucky, that’s Doctor Banner”, the captain introduces the other man, who is smiling a little when he looks up at him. “He’s a friend, and I thought maybe you would let him look at your arm so he can fix it.”  
It feels wrong to hear the captain call this doctor a friend, as if that word was a title Steve should not let people wear so easily, and he doesn’t like it, can hardly bear it. The flame inside him flickers and dances, scorching his insides and making him clench his fists.  
“Can he?”, the captain asks again, his voice tentative and gentle, and it’s only then that he realises that Steve is, once again, waiting for an answer. He nods, even if he doesn’t think that any doctor can fix him, not his arm and not the rest of him.

 

(76)

The doctor has brought his own supplies, some which he thinks he should recognise, but doesn’t, some that Steve used on him as well, and his hands are more determined than the captain’s, obviously knowing what to do and how to do it, carefully pressing against bruises and cuts, pulling them apart and stitching them back together again.  
Doctor Banner is calm too, doesn’t talk much, but tells the captain – or him, he isn’t sure anymore; he’s not supposed to be spoken too, and yet Steve keeps doing it – what is wrong, what he is doing. His voice fits his eyes, fits his face, soft and quiet, a little sad. He likes it, he thinks.

What the captain called fixing before hurts, just like he expected it to, and it continues to hurt when the doctor finally sits up straight again, looking even more tired than before.  
“It’s a miracle you’re still alive”, Doctor Banner says, and this time, it’s definitely directed at him, which feels strange, which makes him look up only to lower his gaze again immediately. He’s not sure where to look, what to do, so he ends up staring at the doctor’s chest, trying not to think. “You shouldn’t be, not with this many cuts and definitely not with cuts this deep. It’s- I don’t even know how you could do this, not on your own. “

Steve makes a sound, and that is what makes him look up again, because it’s a mixture of a gasp and something so much worse, and when his eyes find the captain’s face, he can see the pain written all across it. Can hear it too, when Steve asks, “But he’ll be alright, won’t he? He’ll heal, he got injected with the serum after all, he’s like me, he’ll heal.”  
He doesn’t know if Doctor Banner looks up at the captain, if he doesn’t care and just continues to look at him, because he cannot take his eyes off Steve’s face, even when the doctor answers.  
“I’m pretty certain he will, yes. Since it hasn’t killed him yet, I don’t think it will manage to do so now.”

 

(77)

The doctor pulls Steve into the next room, closing the door behind them; neither of them seems to think of how the serum has advanced his hearing. He doesn’t mean to listen, he wouldn’t ever, but Steve once again has told him not to move, which means he cannot take a step.  
“…it’s not just new cuts, Steve”, the doctor is saying and he tries so hard not to hear a thing, but can’t help but to. “There are scars all over his body. His back – I don’t even want to know what they did, but I am not even surprised that he could take the pain he inflicted on himself, because they must have done things to him which were so much worse and that over such a long time… I know you won’t want to hear this, and I’m not a psychiatrist, but it might be that… that it was too much. That he won’t come back from this.”

There is a pause where there is supposed to be an answer, and then, softly, almost too softly for him to hear it, he hears a sob. Not just one, though, because it’s followed by another one, and another, all of them wet and tortured, and it takes a few seconds until he realises that it’s Steve, that Steve is crying.

 

(78)

He still is oh so bad with emotions, with noticing, recognising them, but he knows this one, knows the hitching sound of the captain’s voice, the violent sobs which seem to blend into another, the half-formed and completely forgotten words he chokes out. Steve is crying and that because of him, and he shouldn’t move, but he does.  
How, he isn’t sure, because there is a direct order he is ignoring, which means punishment, which means disobeying, but he cannot seem to keep his limbs still.

He doesn’t know what to do, just knows that he needs to stop Steve from feeling like this, from making these sounds, from suffering. He needs to protect the captain, needs to make sure he’s safe.

 

(79)

It’s hard with only one arm and his feet feeling twice as clumsy, thrice as heavy, but he manages to drag them to the door, his hand shaking when he turns opens the door; he’s not used to it, gently pulling and not smashing, being quiet and not ignoring who sees, who hears, because he knows that he can kill just who does.  
But he’s quiet now, he’s quiet and hears every beat of his heart, every breath as loud as a gunshot, a tornado when he moves through the hallway, steps speeding up to take him away from hurting the captain further.

He’s sure that this is the right thing to do, and yet every inch he moves away from Steve hurts, as if there was a ribbon tied around his heart which connects him to the captain, and which he is pulling too taut. It’s not the order he is disobeying which hurts, at least not just that, it’s more than it, but he ignores it, because feeling pain is just so normal by now, just trudges on.

The cold hits him like a blow, like a shower of bullets, and he feels like he should scream, but no words come out. He’s not wearing anything but a pair of sweatpants Steve gave him, and the cold prickles on his skin like needles, penetrating him and turning the blood in his veins to ice, even while his heart is racing, his lungs trying desperately to fill themselves with enough lungs to survive.  
Taking another step is impossibly hard, hurts almost as much as slicing his chest open to tear this monster out, but he does it, takes another one afterwards, another and another, although they don’t get easier to do so.

The streets still look like he remembers them, all the same, but this time, people are looking at him, brown and blue and green eyes fixed on him, and it’s all wrong, because no one is supposed to care, no one is supposed to notice.

 

(80)

He doesn’t even make it past the next corner, because every step is just so hard to take, before he can hear footsteps behind him he knows so well, although he has only heard them a few times before. They’re hurried and loud, accompanied by heavy breaths which still look like sobs, and then the captain is behind him and he cannot move.

The other is not touching him, but he still feels his eyes on him, blue and undoubtedly wet with tears.  
“Bucky”, Steve breathes out, uses the name that he still cannot connect to himself, because he doesn’t have a name, he’s no one, “Bucky, oh God, please.”  
There is nothing else for a few second, and there are still so many people around them, people where there aren’t supposed to be any, and he wonders why the captain doesn’t mind them.

“Just- just come back with me”, the captain says in the strangest of all tones, “Please, I know it’s selfish, I do, and I know that you’re hurting, but I… I just can’t-“ The other’s voice crumbles and shatters and breaks and without knowing why, he’s glad that he is not looking at Steve’s face right now. “I can’t lose you. Not again. Just. Not again. I couldn’t bear it. When you fell, I thought I’d die and I didn’t, but if you- if I lost you again, I would, I just know it. And I know that I’m asking for too much, and that I should let you go, but please, just. Just let me be selfish for once. Just stay.”

He still can’t see Steve’s face, but the cold stings his cheeks even worse, and it seemingly takes forever until he realises that it’s because they’re wet, his vision blurred by tears. The ribbon tied around his heart is pulled so taut that he can feel it cutting off the blood flowing through his veins.  
“Is that an order?”, he asks, and his voice sounds wet and hoarse, like dry leaves and trudging on through mud at the same time, as soft as the bed the captain made him spend the night in.  
Steve will say yes, and it will make everything so much easier; somehow he disobeyed one order, but he won’t be able to do that twice.

But Steve makes a sound which sounds almost worse than the sobs and replies, “No. No, Buck, it’s not. It’s a plea.”

 

(81)

Steve takes him up to the flat again, not taking his eyes off him, the captain’s hands kept firmly at his sides, as if he was afraid they would move on their own. He feels strange, but the his heart is beating freely again, the fire burning inside of him not scorching anymore, but gentle, and Steve looks at him like he’s worth keeping.

 

(82)

Two weeks pass, and he is still not used to sleeping in a bed, spends every other night on the floor just to get a bit of sleep, but always moves back before Steve can come to wake him. It might be the same thing as lying, he isn’t quite sure, but the captain always smiles when he sees him in the morning, takes him first to the bathroom to change his bandages and check the scars and healing wounds, then to the living room for breakfast.

They’re almost all gone by now, the cuts and scratches and bruises, but still Steve brings doctors and more doctors, all of them looking him over and shaking their heads, prodding at the ropes of scar tissue spreading out from his shoulders and declare him a miracle.  
Steve asks them all the same question – will he be fine again? – and some of them nod, some say they don’t know. He cannot see the sense in bringing in more of them, so many more, but their words make the captain a bit more content, and that is enough reason for him to let them look, let them touch.

Steve brings other people, too, other friends, a man with dark skin and a bright smile, which he thinks he has seen before, a red-haired woman he knows he has seen before and thought he had killed, a tall, blonde man who smells like electricity and murmurs soft words to the captain he cannot understand. But he puts a hand on Steve’s shoulder, says something which makes tears shine in the other’s eyes and he has to clench his hand to fists at his sides.

Doctor Banner comes, too, once or twice a week, and he likes him, because the doctor is calm and talks in a soft voice, makes Steve smile in a way that doesn’t look like he’s about to cry.

 

(83)

And then there is another man with dark hair and a loud voice, who doesn’t speak much to him, just looks at his mangled arm, touches the metal and pulls at wires, screws, before he goes to speak to Steve. He tries his hardest not to listen, concentrates on his heartbeat and each breath, on the creaking of the bed when he moves, and it almost works.  
“…gonna be hard. I don’t know what exactly he did yet, but he did a good job with ripping out as much as he could of that arm, so I won’t have much to start with. And I’ll have to make sure that my tech is compatible with those bastards’ stuff… but before you ask, yes, I’ll be able to build your boyfriend a new arm.”

The man continues talking and Steve looks like he is trying so, so hard to stay calm, but he cannot concentrate of any of that, because the man said something about a new arm, a new monstrosity stuck to his body when he just managed to get the old one off, another thing to keep him from being human.

His whole body is shaking, trembling, an earthquake wrecking through him, because he can’t let them and yet can’t refuse; his chest feels too small to contain the amount of pure, cold fear rushing through him and making him dizzy, making him fall off the bed and to the ground, onto his knees. It’s the position he knows best, and maybe the one he should never have left, because before this, before his target became the captain became Steve, he wouldn’t have cared, he would have sat down and let them take his other arm too, his legs, his life. But now there are thoughts and feelings and that fire in his chest whenever Steve looks at him, and he can’t take it, can’t take the thought of becoming _him_ again, that soldier.

There are sounds spilling from his lips, and he doesn’t even notice them, just notices it when Steve kneels down in front of him, the captain’s handsome face worried and scared, the other’s hands on his shoulders.  
“Buck, Bucky, talk to me, tell me what’s wrong, are you hurt, is it-“ The words seem to flow freely from Steve’s lips, and for the first time, he doesn’t just listen to them, but interrupts, his own voice desperate and rough.  
“Please, no new arm”, he chokes out and looks down to find his hand still shaking. “Don’t make me- don’t turn me into him again.”

 

(84)

How Steve understands, he doesn’t know, but the other does, makes him look up and into blue, blue eyes and says, “Okay, Buck, okay, no new arm, I promise. I wouldn’t ever make you get one if you didn’t want it. I promise.”

 

(85)

Steve keeps his promise, which is still such a strange, such a frightening concept that he has problems understanding it; the man – Stark, that’s how the captain calls him – comes again, but doesn’t fix a new arm to the ruins of the old one, just cuts off loose wires and the sharp metal parts which tear at the sheets in the bed Steve has given him, turns ragged edges smooth and scratched, dull parts shiny again.

 

(86)

He can’t keep his hand away from the stump afterwards, feeling the polished surface, the smoothness of the metal. It feels so different, not like a weapon, not like dead weight, like something new. Maybe like a start, fresh and clean and all his.

 

(87)

The next night, he dreams of ice.  
He’s on the floor, because he hasn’t slept the two nights before, and he dreams of freezing, his fingertips tingling with cold until they don’t feel anything anymore, the cold seeping up his arms, through his veins, killing every cell it touches.

He wakes without a scream, because it feels like his lips can’t move, but shaking all over, the stump of his arm aching although it’s all metal, all wrong. He’s still cold, so cold his teeth are chattering, his whole body shaking, and he doesn’t know how to pull himself back from that dream, not when he can still feel the cold reaching for him, trying to keep him.

It takes ages until he can move again, feeling as if he had to break through a film of ice before being able to, his movements clumsy and unsure, but he manages to get up, walk to the bathroom without waking Steve, without making him worry. Even if his hand is still shaking when he turns on the shower, gets the water as hot as he possibly can, until it’s steaming up the room.  
He doesn’t even bother to take off his clothes, just steps into the little booth and closes the door behind him, feels the scalding water on his skin. Maybe it leaves blisters as it runs down his chest, but it doesn’t matter, because it sets his scars on fire, runs down his back like molten gold, and melts the ice, makes it thaw until he can breathe again, move and think.

He slides down the wall, wet clothes clinging to his skin and lets the hot water wash everything away, the dream and the ice and everything in between, tipping back his head to let it rain on his face. It's loud, too loud to let him hear the door open; he only notices that he has woken up the captain when the other opens the door to the shower booth, sending a gust of cold air inside, all over him.  
The change of temperature, the return of that cold he has come to dread so much, makes him gasp, open his eyes although the water stings in them, makes them burn.

Steve is standing above him, wet and still dressed, and he cannot bear to look at him, not in the pathetic state he is in, not when he cannot even sleep without hurting the other. So he closes his eyes again, draws his knees up to his chest.  
He expects Steve to leave again, to go back to sleep like he should, but he doesn’t, instead there is shuffling and pushing and the scalding prickling of water on his skin, and then two fingers under his chin, making him look up.

He sees blue, blue eyes, the skin around them pink because of the heat, and Steve says, “It’s alright, Bucky.” And he almost believes him.

 

(88)

Steve puts his hands on his shoulders and pulls him close, the other’s arms around him not keeping him there, just resting around his neck, on his shoulders and making him feel warmer than any amount of water ever could.

 

(89)

And then the memories return.  
It’s a few weeks later, and they ought to feel good, like tiny steps in the right direction, but they don’t, instead feel like punches, feel like cuts and broken bones, shattered joints and electric shocks. Because they’re just that, they’re memories of cuts someone left on his skin, bones that were broken, they’re memories of being locked in a cage and being sprayed down with a hose after a mission, of being beat until he could not even get up anymore, no matter how much they screamed at him.

They’re usually not completely, just fragments and pieces, feelings and single pictures, but they come in groups, overwhelming him and making it hard to breathe, too many things to concentrate on at once. More than once, he ends up on his knees, breathing heavily and trying so hard to be quiet so Steve won’t notice, but it hardly ever works.  
Maybe he’s too loud, or maybe the captain is too good at making out sounds, but he usually ends up kneeling next to him, wrapping strong arms around him and keeping him safe; it used to be a strange feeling, being held and not pushed away, but it’s slowly, ever so slowly, becoming familiar.

Steve, he knows that, is happy about the memories returning, thinks that there might be some hidden inside him which are not just pain and guilt and filth, so he tries to be too, even if his faith is waning.

 

(90)

He hasn’t left the flat in over two weeks when Steve wakes him up one morning and takes him out for a walk. It's a strange thing, seeing the streets again he used to walk, feeling concrete under his boots, wind on his cheeks.  
The air is still cold, but he’s got layers upon layers of clothing to protect him and Steve is beside him, warmth jolting through him whenever their hands touch.

They’re not walking towards something, they’re just walking, and somehow that is soothing, too, and it’s only when he starts to recognise buildings, sees that café he spent so time staring at, trying to memorise that young man’s laughter, that he realises that Steve is letting him lead the way. If it’s a good thing or not, he doesn’t know, but coming here again, seeing things he used to see every day, almost feels a bit like coming home.

Time has changed him – he has changed himself – but still, his feet carry him down to the river and Steve follows, only sometimes throwing a glance in his direction; when their hands brush, he is never sure if it’s unintentional or not.  
It still looks the same, the mud harder then he remembers, the river greyer and the air still so crisp it stings, but he recognises the trees, the bushes, knows where he slept and where he left Steve all those months ago, soaking wet and bruised.

His feet stop walking and he doesn’t mind, just stares out at the flowing water, remembers the cold of it, the feeling of never getting enough air, the weight of the captain dragging him down. Steve doesn’t say a word, although he wishes the other would, so to break the silence, he has to speak himself.  
“I pulled you out of the river”, he says after a few moments of thinking, even if he is still not sure if it’s the right thing to say. He thinks that Steve knows already, even if he was so careful not to be caught, but he can’t be sure, especially not when he is still so bad at reading people, still so bad at knowing what they think.

“I know”, Steve says, his voice soft and still strong, and it seems that at least this time he could read the captain, and the thought is exhilarating. For a few more moments, he stays silent, just listens to the wind and the water and the beat of his own heart, wonders if he should say what is on his mind, before realising that he always, always has to be honest with Steve.  
“I still don’t know why”, he all but whispers, and expects Steve next to him to tense; the other doesn’t, doesn’t gasp or move or flee. Just brushes their hands together – because it has to be intentional, there is no other way, not now, and it makes him feel warm inside, as if he was burning – and answers, “I do.”

Answers, “Because you’re my friend.”

 

(90)

They don’t stay long, because it’s cold and he still cannot bear it for too long; their hands brush, Steve looks over and smiles at him and he can’t help but wish he could reach out and lace their fingers together.

 

(91)

It’s just an image, at first.

They’re on the couch and it’s late at night, Steve drawing and Bucky staring into the distance, the television on because the soft chatter is relaxing to him for some reason, and when he glances at the screen, there is green grass and a blue sky and he _sees Steve_.  
Sees him younger than ever, his jaw sharper but his eyes just as blue, head pillowed on thin, frail arms and lips curled up into a smile he thought he knew, only that this one is so much brighter, so much sweeter it feels like a supernova compared to the morning star.

The picture fades, but it stays hidden inside of him, and he’s still taken with it, still more there than here, and the captain doesn’t notice, but looks so different than the version he still has in front of his eyes when he blinks.  
“Steve…”, he whispers and only realises a second afterwards that it’s the first time he has used the other’s name in this life. Steve, though, Steve notices right away, must notice, because he drops his notebook and leans forward, his expression unreadable, at least to him. Still, he doesn’t give the other time to speak, just continues, “A sunny day… grass, there was grass. And we were, _you_ were… I think you were happy.”

Words are starting to get jumbled in his mind, blending and mixing, so he closes his eyes, sees Steve smiling at him once more. “Did that happen?”  
There is a choked up, small sound and he opens his eyes again, and Steve is still smiling that smile he now remembers, brighter and clearer than ever, his face harder and yet ever so gentle, blue eyes shining wetly. “Yes- yes, it did. A hundred times.”

 

(92)

They start coming more often after that, the memories, both bad and good, but he’s willing to take every feeling of being beaten and locked up and frozen, of killing and hurting and maiming, if he gets those glimpses in between: Building a forte out of pillows and blankets on the floor of a room that feels familiar and warm and like Steve’s flat does now; letting Steve dab at a cut on his forehead even if the other looks far worse; doing extra shifts to buy Steve a new set of pencils for his birthday.

He likes the bright and happy ones best, the ones with Steve and his smile, no matter if he is tall and strong or small and sickly, but in the end, it doesn’t matter – he takes them all gladly, no matter how painful (because there are painful ones, ones of nights spent drinking and trying not to cry, of feeling lonely and of leaving the city, of leaving Steve behind to go to war), because they are important.  
They’re all what is left of Bucky Barnes and he needs every bit of him he can get, because that’s what Steve wants him to be, that’s what makes him human.

Sometimes, the memories come alone, triggered by a thought or a picture, but most of the time, they just come whenever they are ready. He tells Steve about every one, no matter if good or bad, even about the ones which make him feel cold inside, as if he was still wearing a chain around his neck to keep him from running.  
The other tries to help, sometimes makes tea, sometimes just holds him; when it’s a good memory, Steve tells him whatever story he can remember to go along with it, takes him out to see the place again, plays music and gets food and does whatever he can to make him remember more, to make it seem more real.

But most importantly, he listens, even if his eyes cloud over with something that looks like sadness, just sweeter, even if he sometimes forgets how to speak.

 

(92)

Their house isn’t standing anymore – because that is what Steve calls it, their house, although he can only remember parts of the living room, two mattresses pushed into a small chamber, a thin curtain separating them from each other - but Steve takes him there anyway, even if there is only another building to look at, which feels nothing like home.

“It’s so different”, Steve says, and sounds slightly sad, but still turns to smile at him. “Strange that I’d miss the old house, I couldn’t stand the flat when we were still living in it. You’ll remember it one day, all the mould and the leaking faucet. It used to drive you insane.”  
The other stops for a moment, but he knows it’s not because Steve waits for him to remember – they have tried that and it never worked – but just because he himself is reminiscing, thinking about something he doesn’t know how to share.  
“I’m so happy that you’re back”, Steve finally says, and he still doesn’t remember, but for the first time, it doesn’t bother him at all.

 

(93)

That night, Bucky wakes, feels cold all over although he has four blankets piled up on his body. He’s been dreaming, remembering, like he sometimes does, but although there was ice, he isn’t screaming, because for once, ice did have nothing to do with Hydra, nothing to do with pain.

It was a memory like he has never had before, because Steve was not in it, just Bucky Barnes and a winter’s day and his mother’s voice calling out for him. Usually, he would call Steve now, or get up and fight the cold until he could get into the other’s bedroom, but not this time, not today.  
For some reason, it would feel wrong to do so, and it takes him several, long seconds until he realises why: Because for the first time in this life, he has something which is only his.

 

(94)

Steve doesn’t say anything the next day when they have breakfast together, but he knows that the other can feel the changes that small, tiny fragment of a memory has brought with it; it’s in his eyes when he looks at Bucky, in his words when he speaks.  
“Anything you’d like to do today, Buck?”, Steve asks, and takes a sip of his coffee, which he drinks far too sweet, far too bitter.

Usually, he says no, says he doesn’t know, and usually, it’s the truth, but today, he nods, and watches Steve’s eyes go wide. “Yes. I’d like to see the river again.”

 

(95)

They leave after breakfast, Steve in a jacket and he wrapped in three of them, left sleeves hanging down his side empty, but that doesn’t matter, because Steve is walking on his right side, and he can just reach out and take the other’s hand, like he should have done the first time.

 

(96)

A month passes and more memories come back, until he can sleep in a bed without waking at night because it feels like it will swallow him, like someone will come to drag him out of it, punish him for his insolence (Steve has told him he had problems with it too, at first, and that just makes it so much better). Most of them are still of his time as the soldier, but there are enough other images and feelings and thoughts to make them bearable, sweet things with Steve and without, sad ones and those he doesn’t understand.

There are a few of them, appearing ever so often, and he cannot make sense of them. They are memories of standing next to Steve and still feeling lonely, of lying awake at night and just yearning for a look from the other, of feeling electric sparks flying when they touched.  
He tells Steve about them, but the other just looks at him with misted over blue eyes, and answers that there are some things he has to find out for himself, without someone else telling him his story.

 

(97)

The air is cold and feels like a punch, feels like a whip coming down on his flesh, but he still takes a deep breath, just like one of the doctors Steve takes him told him to. It’s been months, which feel like years, and still, he is best at following orders, feels safest when he is doing something he has been told to do.  
He could just turn around and walk back inside, where everything is safe and familiar, but he doesn’t; it’s the first time since he run off that he is alone, or at least as alone as one can be in the middle of a city.

A city, Bucky realises, he still knows, as if it had a heartbeat which has become his own, and after all that time, it still feels almost normal to walk down the street, where no one looks at him and he doesn’t have to look back.  
Where his feet want to carry him, he doesn’t know, and doesn’t find out, because he doesn’t let them do what they wish for, instead steers his steps to the museum he used to visit on such a regular basis. And it’s strange, because he is around Steve all the time these days, and yet, the blue, painted eyes make him shiver, not like cold, but like a memory Bucky doesn’t know if he wants back.

 

(98)

He has only been gone for an hour and three minutes, and yet Bucky comes back to the flat to find Steve looking scared, worried, lost. It takes him a few moments until he realises why - the other must have feared he has left for good.

“Oh god, Buck”, Steve breathes out when the door falls shut and the other whips around, blue eyes wide and relieved and maybe still a little bit angry, because Bucky made him worry; it’s wrong, but it’s exhilarating to know that he can have this effect on Steve, can scare him, can make him care. “I thought-“  
He never finished the sentence, just stops talking, no trailing off voice, a conscious decision not to go on. Instead of talking, he Steve takes a breath, curls his lips into a smile which doesn’t look quite right, but which is still bright enough to soothe him.  
“I’m glad you’re back. Did you take a walk?”

 

(99)

In the end, what makes him find out what he is feeling is nothing at all.

It's morning and he couldn’t sleep, neither could Steve, so it’s too early and they are watching the sun rise. The light is cold and still golden, painting the buildings all around them bright colours, and Bucky can feel his eyes drooping, because he hasn’t slept in more than forty hours.  
Still, it’s beautiful, and so he watches, makes a new memory and sees how the sun tints the world a sweeter colour.

And he turns around because he wants to say something to Steve, expects to find the other watching the sunrise, but Steve is watching him with the same kind of awe in his eyes, the same intensity. He doesn’t look away, and Bucky doesn’t remember anything new, but he doesn’t have to, because this doesn’t have anything to do with what he used to be.  
This is him, like he is now, and it’s Steve and the way the other still looks at him, it’s the tingling when their hands touch and the fire inside him only Steve can spark, it’s remembering Steve when he couldn’t remember he was human.

Bucky doesn’t even think about it, doesn’t give himself time to fret and overthink, just leans in and brushes their lips together in the softest, smallest kiss. It’s hardly a touch, but at the same time, it’s everything, because Steve’s breath hitches, and he is bursting with feeling, overflowing with it, and he still can’t remember and doesn’t want to; doesn’t want anything which isn’t this and Steve and their lips touching.

 

(+1)

Steve leads him downstairs again, and nothing has changed, only that Steve’s hand is on his right arm, holding him steady, and his eyes are shining so brightly they put the sun to shame. Exhaustion is still making the world look fuzzy and blurred around the edges, but Bucky can see the other clearly, can almost hear the beats of his heart, the breaths he takes.  
The other stops in the middle of the stairs, a ray of sunlight illuminating his face when he turns around.

He expects words to come, pretty, soothing words, but Steve doesn’t open his mouth, just pulls him close and holds him tightly, burying his face in the crook of Bucky’s neck. It’s not the first time that Steve hugs him, but it’s different now, more intense, and it's the first time that he raises the one arm he still has and wraps it around Steve’s waist, feeling hard muscle and the soft fabric of the other’s t-shirt.

“I missed you”, Steve mutters, his voice so quiet that he almost feels the words more than he hears them. “God, I missed you so much, Buck.”  
The other’s arms tighten until it gets hard to breathe, but that is alright, because the words are dripping with affection; the fire inside him – the love, for it’s that and nothing as dangerous, as destructive as fire – flares up and warms him from inside out and makes him answer without thinking, without hesitation.  
“I missed you too.”  
And he means it.

 

 

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> In case you want to say hi, send me a prompt, or tell me something nice, you can find me on Tumblr here:  
> [X](http://www.coloursflyaway.tumblr.com)


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